


iced americano

by jjokkiri



Category: Produce 101 (TV), UP10TION, X1 (Korea Band)
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Mentions of alcohol, Wooseok-centric, a lot of metaphors or smth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21874099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjokkiri/pseuds/jjokkiri
Summary: Through the years, Wooseok’s tastes changed. He changed.(Or at least, it makes him feel better to think he has.)
Relationships: Cho Seungyeon | Seungyoun/Kim Wooseok | Wooshin, Han Seungwoo/Kim Wooseok | Wooshin, Kim Wooseok | Wooshin/Lee Jinhyuk
Comments: 5
Kudos: 50





	iced americano

**Author's Note:**

> take a shot every time i mention wooseok’s age.

Kim Wooseok, twenty-six, was a storm before he was a person; a torrential downpour until there was nothing left. And he was a disaster in what others would call ‘love’ before he was a storm. 

Kim Wooseok, twenty-six, was a shell of the man who once held so much hope for what people called ‘love’. Somewhere between his teenage years of falling in love, laughing with someone he hoped to call his ‘forever’, and realizing that the world never granted wishes, a storm gusted into a warm heart and blew out that flame of hope. 

High school might have been the best time of his life. 

High school might have been the best time for his love. 

For Kim Wooseok, at fifteen, falling in love with his best friend might have been the easiest thing he had ever done. At fifteen, Lee Jinhyuk was still a part of his life. At fifteen, Lee Jinhyuk was the biggest part of his life. _His favourite part_.

At fifteen, love was childish. 

When he was so young, there was only so much he could associate with the feeling of being in love. But he was certain that the fluttering feeling he felt in his chest when Jinhyuk smiled at him had to be the feeling of love—the elating feeling described in books, shown in movies. 

With Jinhyuk, everything was familiar and everything was good. Wooseok remembered that much about loving Jinhyuk. With Jinhyuk, everything was soft and gentle like the scarf that Jinhyuk would wrap around his neck when the winters got too cold and his cheeks flushed red.

Back then, Jinhyuk liked his hot chocolate with a light dust of cocoa powder over the top of his whipped cream and marshmallows. And Wooseok liked the way kissing Jinhyuk tasted sweet. 

And then, at eighteen, along with being on the brink of his teenage years ending, came Lee Jinhyuk disappearing from his life. The familiar smile on Jinhyuk’s face was replaced with a frown and furrowed brows; a whisper that he was moving overseas for university and he wasn’t sure when he was coming back. _If he was coming back._

They promised to keep in contact, back then. They promised that even without sweet romance lacing their hands and lives together, they would do their best to keep their friendship intact. Back then, they said they couldn’t let a decade of friendship slip between their fingers so easily. They couldn’t let a decade slip as easily as three years of love did.

And somewhere along the way, it was Wooseok who stopped picking up the phone. The text messages came slow and the responses even slower. And it was Jinhyuk who stopped trying.

And maybe it was his fault in the end, but maybe that was when Wooseok decided that nothing in life was ever permanent. Maybe, that was when Wooseok’s tastes changed.

* * *

Kim Wooseok, at twenty, decided he liked the taste of alcohol on his tongue; the burn of hard liquor scorching down his throat wiped away all the memories he simply didn’t want. The taste of alcohol never stayed with him for too long. At some point, it tasted like nothing and he would only remember its scent in the morning when he woke up in someone else’s bed.

More times than he could count, he woke up in Han Seungwoo’s bed. More times than he could count, he woke up with the other man’s arms wrapped around his waist, comforting and warm.

And at some unidentifiable point in the timeline, between falling into bed with a familiar body in a familiar room and falling asleep against Seungwoo’s shoulder in the library study room, something changed.

With Seungwoo, it—if it could even be called love—was a blur. It was recklessly roping himself into messes and hoping that Seungwoo knew a way out. He always did. 

A year and a half into piecing together the clearer memories between the blurs, he found a way out of the mess they tried to call romance, too.

And Han Seungwoo broke the strings that held them together, but he stayed.

Wooseok changed.

* * *

Wooseok would never say that the relationships he threw himself into were a waste of his time. The people he spent little parts of his life with were people who deserved better. _Better than him._

It was more likely that spending their life with him was a waste of _their_ time. 

Because he spent five years of his life trying to convince himself that he liked drinking coffee with two teaspoons of sugar and an unnerving dose of milk. He spent five years of his life trying to convince himself that he liked his coffee the way that Cho Seungyoun did. 

And then, somewhere along the way, he decided, _I never liked coffee anyway._

The silence that lingered in the air between him and Seungyoun was almost deafening. The silence was louder than the soft whispers lingering in the coffee shop, louder than the cheerful holiday music chiming through the coffee shop. 

Wooseok looked up from the drop of cream that swirled itself into his cup of dark coffee. _Ruined it, even._ He wouldn’t like the taste anymore. He wouldn’t want the taste to stain his tongue. It would just sit on the table in front of them, untouched.

For a moment, he was quiet; wordless. The silence between them felt thick; heavy. Heavy with the words that danced at the tip of their tongues, unwilling to let go, something like the way that the aftertaste of coffee lingered on Wooseok’s tongue long after he finished it.

Wooseok broke the silence. He said, softly, “Hey.”

Seungyoun raised his eyes. He was visibly tense. 

Across the table from Wooseok, the other man shifted in his seat and tugged the edge of his black beanie down over his fringe. It was longer than Wooseok remembered it being. A part of his mind dared to ask him, _how long has it been since you’ve really stopped and looked at him?_ Wooseok brushed it off. The only sign of acknowledgement he showed to Wooseok’s soft voice was the brief second of eye contact before he looked away. 

_There used to be something more in those eyes,_ Wooseok thought. He didn’t notice when it disappeared. He didn’t know if it was his fault or if the light died beyond his control.

He supposed it didn’t matter anymore.

“Let’s break up.”

* * *

When Wooseok walked away from the table that Seungyoun had abandoned half an hour ago, he walked directly to the counter. The heartbroken look on Seungyoun’s face was something that was unfamiliar to Wooseok. It left a strange twinge buried deep in Wooseok’s chest. 

The barista standing behind the counter looked at him with a knowing smile, pitying. The familiar gaze on a familiar face felt like reassurance.

There was a beat of silence.

“What would you like today?”

Something flickered in Wooseok’s eyes. _Something sad_.

“An iced americano, please,” he replied, quietly. His eyes lingered on the barista as the tall man scribbled his name onto the side of the cup. 

The barista glanced back up at him. He simply said, “You don’t like coffee.”

He didn’t. It was an acquired taste that became familiar. 

Wooseok sighed, “No one is like you, Seungwoo hyung.”

Seungwoo smiled at him, a simple press of his lips into a forced grin, and turned away to make his coffee. 

“That’s okay. You’re not looking for someone like me, Wooseok,” he replied. He closed the lid over the plastic cup and placed it in front of Wooseok. “We’ve been through that.”

Seungwoo swiped his own card for Wooseok’s drink and handed it to him. 

“I don’t know what I’m looking for, hyung,” he said. 

The barista offered him a kind smile and a shrug of his shoulders. Seungwoo shoved his hands into the front pocket of his apron and toyed with the pen hooked to the fabric, “Someone who makes you feel the same way that Jinhyuk made you feel at fifteen?” 

At twenty-six, that sounded ridiculous.

At twenty-six, Wooseok looked down at the iced Americano in his hands, the cold seeping through the thin plastic to freeze his hands. He knew it would be bitter. But it would taste familiar; an underlying note of something sweet buried beneath the overwhelming bitter taste. 

It would be familiar. The note of sweetness buried in the bitter taste of the coffee would remind him of fifteen, Jinhyuk’s hand (held tightly in his own), bubbling laughter over the edge of a scarf Jinhyuk wrapped around his neck. And it would remind him of fifteen, Jinhyuk’s love for hot chocolate. _For him._

He would let the taste linger on his tongue. He liked things that were familiar.

“Someone who can make it feel as easy as he did,” he said, quietly. “And someone who would stick around the way that you do. And someone who would look at me like Seungyoun used to.”

_But, I can’t have it all._

Seungwoo’s lips pressed into a thin line. There was a trace of concern in his eyes that followed with a tired worry. The barista stood up straight behind the counter. 

He exhaled a soft breath. “Let’s go out tonight, Wooseok.”

 _He loved himself better when he wouldn’t remember it in the morning._ Seungwoo knew it all too well.

Wooseok nodded his head. 

Some nights, he went back in time to Wooseok, twenty, who liked the taste of alcohol burning down his throat. At least that burn felt better than the numbness in his chest. 

At least that was familiar.

**Author's Note:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/yuseokki) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jjokkiri) ♡  
> funny story, i joined a wips fest to finish everything i was already working on but i sidetracked and wrote this instead.


End file.
